Guild Wars 2

I know that the topic of rebuilding Lions Arch has been touched upon in various other threads, but I can’t find one dedicated it. We do know that LA will be rebuilt one way or another, it wouldn’t make sense storywise to leave it a pile of ruins. Its been speculated that the Zehyrites could have a hand in it, and that the next Dragon Bash could be a kick off for the rebuilding. We don’t really have much, beyond speculation, as to how it’s going to come about. Here are some ideas I’ve been tossing around.

The Pact: With the “newly” formed Pact, they could take over LA and rebuild it as a new headquarters. A central place from which to conduct their investigations and coordinate attack and defense of the Elder Dragons. Being rebuilt with much better defenses, it would become a fortified city, a stronghold against the Dragons in days to come.

The powers that be: The leaders of the major races decide to come together to build a place where the different races can truly live together. The humans, Charr, Norn, Asura, and the Silvari have elected to build one city that reflects and embraces the difference between the races. This city would be independant of any nation, and ruled by a council of elected officials from each of those nations. After the rise of the Elder Dragons, and the chaos and destruction wrought by Scarlet, the leaders of Tyria realize that only through cooperation between ALL of its peoples is the only way for either of them to survive. This city would be the first major step toward that goal, and a sign to all people that the races CAN work together.

The Black Lion Trading Company: The BLTC decides to rebuild LA as a form of a giant market place, and central location. Having lost one of their major tading posts, they seek to rebuild it, this time, not as an agency operating within confines of the local government, but establishing themselves AS the local government. Being free to conduct business without taxes and interferance, they seek to expand their reach even more into the world, and hope to be able to reach the far off lands such as Cantha and Elona. Having a central powerbase such things would not be out of reach.

The Captains Council: The Captains Council remains in power in LA, and rises from the ashes. Although nowhere close to it’s former glory, the ruins are rebuilt, and the council can excersise more control over the city, and increase their own power. The city remains a melting pot of the nations, and the council grows fatter with new taxes and new laws as they seek ultimate control over LA and it’s destiny.

These are just a few of my ideas. Would love to hear yours!

I feel that the most likely would be a variant on the Captain’s Council idea-the Council and surviving citizens rebuild the city, likely with some material help from allies like Kryta or the Zephyrites, but due to their bungled managing of the situation immediately before the attack and in this aftermath phase, the citizenry will turn on the Council, changing up the ranks quite a bit and possibly curtailing the power of the Council as a whole. I also expect it’ll just be something going on in the background, rather than being a part of the main story or having any particular patch dedicated to it, with the exception of the first release of Season 2.

Captain’s council is still around, they simply are trying to get trade and security restored…

The Pact just claiming the area would be a major political issue IMO.

It would be a major policitical issue, but that’s what makes it interesting.

Interesting… and also a hog for screentime and player attention. It would appeal to a small demographic, but probably not one large enough to be worth the amount of screentime it would require. And besides, the Pact is an in-universe symbol for ANet’s design philosophies. It would be exceedingly strange if they undermined what it stands for by pitting it against the local governments.

Besides, the Pact already has headquarters, and one that doesn’t conflict with the way the story and time is set in maps – Fort Trinity. On that matter, I’d be interested in seeing Fort Trinity grow as the pact readies up for the next task and become a small military city- of course, that’d require some major changes in certain personal story missions.

To throw out a few other possibilities:

Krytan takeover: Whether because it’s seizing an opportunity to reclaim the old capital or because LA is too important to be left abandoned, I could see Kryta moving in if the Captain’s Council drops the ball (recall that Kryta still had major ports on the Sea of Sorrows in the book, but now they appear to be almost completely reliant on LA for such shipping. This could be in the form of an overt takeover, or through providing support to the Captain’s Council in return for enough concessions that Kryta gains some ability to dictate policy to a greater or lesser extent. Either way, for both foreign political reasons and Jennah’s own philosophies, such a scenario would probably still leave LA a multicultural city, but one with greatly expanded Krytan influence.

If everybody drops the ball in the long run, then I could see centaurs moving in – we’ve been told that the centaurs are mainly looking for living and growing space, and a relatively moderate faction among the centaurs might see founding a nation around Lion’s Arch (which might include some of Lornar’s Pass as well as eastern Gendarran) as an easier option than constant fighting with Kryta. If the centaurs were reasonably generous in allowing other nations to use LA as a port, I could see such a nation being recognised even by Kryta if it meant formalised borders that both agreed to. Such a scenario is a pretty wild one, though, as it would pretty much require all other interested parties to neglect LA to the point of not even bothering to defend it as centaurs move in.

Wow, didnt even considerbthe centaurs..that is interesting though

Why would anyone recognise the Captain’s Council any more? They proved to be incompetent in the last few releases. If you were going to rebuild anything, why not start fresh and abandon the old “leadership” that proved they couldn’t do their jobs properly? The Captain’s Council seems to be a redundant legacy from a different time, Lion’s Arch doesn’t thrive off of Captain’s and ships (at least not from what I’ve see), so it’s bizarre that to have a say in Lion’s Arch politicals you need to own a ship (what a silly requirement). Trade seems to be the most important industry in Lion’s Arch these days, an alliance of traders are personally invested in protecting the city and are constantly personally accountable for the best interests of the city. Traders are aware of what puts their products at risk and are willing to do what needs to be done to protect it, if they aren’t they fail as traders. An incompetent trader doesn’t stay wealthy for long. It also makes it clearer why the city would fund the Lionguard on the roads to the city. The Consortium, the BLTC, the Tengu and a few other racial representatives could form an interesting group of leaders.

If Lion’s Arch is rebuilt, I hope one of the first steps is to abandon the Captain’s Council.

LA is a major port city. We might not have seen the ships coming and going, but they did.

“Last few releases” meaning battle of LA only… which lasted maybe a week in the canon. They kittened up ONE defensive action, a major one admittedly, but the Lionguard retook the city quickly.

Yes, trust in them may be shaken somewhat, but they are still the leaders of LA.

In the living story and personal story, they didn’t mess up that often before the battle of LA.

The Council could easily come back even if its not the same membership, Shiren

Shiren.9532:

Why would anyone recognise the Captain’s Council any more?

Because they have money, lots and lots of money, and that gives them the power to call the shots, especially during the rebuilding effort. The average everyday citizens might not like them, but they can’t get their houses back, much less LA as a whole, unless the Captain’s Council writes a check to pay for all the materials, it transportation, and all the labor it’s going to take to rebuild everything.

@Kalavier They didn’t do much before the Battle of Lion’s Arch. The Order leaned on them to evacuate the city after Claw Island, but I believe that’s their only input to the personal story. They didn’t even exist in game until Dragon Bash.

So their track record, as we know it: one smart move, that wasn’t their own idea. One forgivable oversight, which killed one of their number and injured two more. One smart move, economically speaking. And one completely unforgivable failure to act, despite ample forewarning that a major attack was imminent from a member of the community who had proven trustworthy beforehand and one of their own members. No independent investigation, no balanced investment taking into consideration the risk versus the probability and costs… just earplugs. I’d say at least some of them deserve the boot, Kiel, Peter, and possibly Magnus excepted.

@Shiren The problem is exactly that they’re all traders. We learned from SoS that a rich trader can simply buy a ship to qualify, and we know for a fact that the asura were both businessmen with little ties to shipping and that two of the humans were simply old money. The captains of the Captain’s Council are already only accounting for about half of it, and the gambles of financial investments require a much different skill set than competently overseeing the well-being and security of a thriving port city.

They existed before dragon bash. They simply were in the captain’s council building. I talked to them before that LS update.

The Order of whispers didn’t lean on them to evacuate the city after claw island was retaken, they actually worked to help strength the city.

All three orders helped defend the city at claw island, and at the battle of LA.

They’ve run the city for a long while, and while stupid, typically when somebody attacks a city and gets repelled, they don’t charge back in again. Hell, I think nobody was expecting the Aetherblade airships to be numbered that many, or to do such a deadly bombardment. Scarlets attack was vicious, and even IF they had prepared defenses LA would’ve fallen that day anyway.

My bad, it was the first Southsun release that added them.

From Reconnaissance:
Doern Velazquez: Agent Riel, is the commodore aware of the situation?
Riel Darkwater: He is, sir. The city’s being evacuated in accordance with the Master of Whispers’ plan.

It wasn’t charging back in again. It happened eight months later, and just three months in the Lionguard discovered that airships were being manufactured on a massive scale. Knowing that, it is completely unreasonable that they did nothing when they were warned that Scarlet and just tested a superweapon and was heading to Lion’s Arch next. Regardless of the size of the actual attack, they should have set up defenses.

Eight months later in lore exactly, or no? Remember, marionette event happened ONCE. It could’ve actually been the invasion happening within DAYS of Kiel warning them/trying to push for greater defenses, not weeks.

The airship factory was shut down though, and all docked there disabled/destroyed/claimed. They could have thought that was the ONLY factory, or those were the bulk of the fleet (and that wouldn’t be crazy to think of at the time).

Also said superweapon was disabled/destroyed before it could go off (in canon, happened ONCE and was a win for good guys). Likely the airship (breachmaker) disappeared.

Again, these events could’ve happened in canon in very short order, and not the weeks IRL. As I recall, the actual battle for LA (From Scarlet’s alliance invading to cleanup post breachmaker explosion) was around a week total in the lore, not the months it was for us.

ANet did state that they want to more or less align out-of-game and in-game time, and Wintersday kind of forces them to, so eight months is a good ballpark figure.

Fair enough, but it nonetheless would have been a huge red flag that this operation is much bigger than they had though.

The marionette was destroyed… but when a known terrorist and enemy of your city has made off in an airship the size of your harbor, you… continue to ensure that your guard is down. Makes perfect sense.

We don’t have a figure for how long it took, at least that I’ve heard. There is something that sets a minimum value, but not a max. It could have been a week, yes, but it also could have been a month. But that’s neither here nor there. By the end of the first day most of the Council had proven how bad they were at their job.

Rebuild on the past.

You’ll understand, I want to share with you a dream about the Arck reconstruction. And it’s extension step by step to other cities. I don’t want to be the only one to dream, and I think to submit my dream on the official forum.
To me, the Ark didn’t show well the cultural medley of all races. Then, Scarlet arrived. Since the ruines give me the ideal of a cosmopolitan city.

I imagined the inhabitants come back, scare the looters and reclaim their homeland.
I seen the Sylvaris share their love of nature and grow huge and colorful plants under the remainings archs, old mix with new, resculpting the “world”. Lamps half plant, half Asuran crystal illuminating the new streets with a soft blue shade.

I seen, drawn in my head, Human based buildings made of wood and stone, Norns girder protecting a merchant hall. The ground covered with Charrs gears, bridges made of gears with energetic fields filling the holes. I seen a plant bridge welcoming new Pact zeppelins. The houses, rebuilded, now bearing a luxuriant architecture, strange and beautiful.

I seen the Scarlet’s drill metal carved and used to make new shops offering Lion guard armor and pirates armor.
I imagined a new “leafy cathedral” as base for an auction house with new windows made ??of energy. I imagined a new shipyard behind the lighthouse, I could already see a new place where the old portal standed, protected in the middle of the rocks.

The Aetherblade fence disappear for a plant and Asuran entrance. Narrow passages in places being dug to accommodate black markets countertops offering strange products. Strange oceanic races comed to propose algas and seafood, foreshadowing the future submarine.

I imagined the Captain’s Council to manage the repairs. New city, more daring, more alive is what is in my dream.
Imagine these streets illuminated by a delicate blue shade, bright colors, buildings back and open to players. To clean water, and seek to create a protection on the disrupted ley line, the Pact style, the Quaggan back and expanding the village. Old farmhouses be assisted by sylvari to bring food, new caves with a new type of lion’s guard fortress, with sculptures and charr and asuran creations. The actual merging of cultures.
Corvan statue recreated, passages in the mountains near the tengu, operated by new watchtowers and a new lighthouse.

An hospital near the waterfall with the new model, held by Asuras and Charrs with Human secretaries, priests. Two floors, stone carved and vegetal, with a memorial slab.
Welcoming the strange new breeds and old taverns, making the ark even more mysterious and fantastic time.
I guess the new lion statue, surrounded by heroes of each people, standing proudly back on the main square, and sewers, a supernatural black market or traffic and the threat reign.

The Lion’s Arch? Die? Why should it be?

i had a thought that maybe the leaders of each of the five races might work toward rebuilding LA. make it a truly multi cultural city as it is important to all races. that probably wouldn’t happen but it would make for an interesting city both politically and architecturally.

one this i believe for sure is that it will be rebuilt. why leave a map on the grid with no value other than mapping and three jumping puzzles. right now that is all that it is good for.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

ANet did state that they want to more or less align out-of-game and in-game time, and Wintersday kind of forces them to, so eight months is a good ballpark figure.

Fair enough, but it nonetheless would have been a huge red flag that this operation is much bigger than they had though.

The marionette was destroyed… but when a known terrorist and enemy of your city has made off in an airship the size of your harbor, you… continue to ensure that your guard is down. Makes perfect sense.

We don’t have a figure for how long it took, at least that I’ve heard. There is something that sets a minimum value, but not a max. It could have been a week, yes, but it also could have been a month. But that’s neither here nor there. By the end of the first day most of the Council had proven how bad they were at their job.

Yes, but the escape from LA and battle for LA happened once. Unless you are saying it took them 2 weeks for the miasma to clear and another 2 weeks to actually get to the breachmaker… it doesn’t make sense. I’m thinknig it’s more of “These events happen within this period (like a week total for the battle), and the rest is actually empty time”. Remember they set up the repeating events because of the screwup/issues at the ancient Karka. The battle for LA does NOT make sense to last a month, especially since we can go down to the bottom of the drill area and it’s not THAT deep. And my knowledge is with these types of battles, once they get past the walls (or Miasma), you have a short, bloody battle because everybody is charging in.

Yes, they did do a stupid thing. BUT it was also understandable.

Okay, look at Scarlet’s previous actions. ALL were stopped by adventurers + local military/order forces. It wouldn’t be that crazy to think somebody who isn’t or hasn’t been directly involved with it to think that “Hey, if she DOES attack us.. which I doubt because look at how her forces have been treated before… the Lionguard and adventurer population here will handle it easily.” Scarlet’s attack was an utter steamroll that would’ve destroyed the city even if they had cannons and lionguard all over and expecting an attack. (Mainly the Miasma which forced them to leave the city or die).

Again, one kittenup doesn’t mean they are bad at their job. Especially when the public information pointed at her forces causing trouble, NOT widescale destruction. They could’ve think with the destruction of the aetherblade path that crippled her airship forces. The marionette event drained even most of her forces (to their viewpoint).

They underestimated her, it bit them in the kitten . They likely will take future security threats more seriously because of it, regardless of how easily the group was taken out by random adventurers.

I’m of the thought that Kiel warned them, they dismissed it at first because of above reasons, and then Scarlet attacked before both Kiel’s plans could happen.
A: Get the lionguard more prepared within the limits she can
B: Continue to convince the bulk of the captains council of the danger.

Shiren.9532:

Why would anyone recognise the Captain’s Council any more? They proved to be incompetent in the last few releases. If you were going to rebuild anything, why not start fresh and abandon the old “leadership” that proved they couldn’t do their jobs properly? The Captain’s Council seems to be a redundant legacy from a different time, Lion’s Arch doesn’t thrive off of Captain’s and ships (at least not from what I’ve see), so it’s bizarre that to have a say in Lion’s Arch politicals you need to own a ship (what a silly requirement). Trade seems to be the most important industry in Lion’s Arch these days, an alliance of traders are personally invested in protecting the city and are constantly personally accountable for the best interests of the city. Traders are aware of what puts their products at risk and are willing to do what needs to be done to protect it, if they aren’t they fail as traders. An incompetent trader doesn’t stay wealthy for long. It also makes it clearer why the city would fund the Lionguard on the roads to the city. The Consortium, the BLTC, the Tengu and a few other racial representatives could form an interesting group of leaders.

If Lion’s Arch is rebuilt, I hope one of the first steps is to abandon the Captain’s Council.

The requirement to have a ship to be on the council is a matter of tradition. With the rising of Orr, LA was destroyed in the great tidal wave that followed. The ruins of the original city were salvaged by pirates, smugglers, and other independant ships. It would make sense with a largely independant group of people, mostly sea faring folks, trying to develop a system of government to have a requirement of being the captain of a ship to have a place on the council.

One thing…something that we’re all apparently overlooking:

Scarlet’s drill is still sitting on the bay floor, and is still punched through the crust there. If you swim down there you can both see and hear the energy of the disrupted ley line. And somewhere on the other end of that ley line is an Elder Dragon—newly awakened, hungry, and grumpy.

Whoever ends up rebuilding LA…have they thought it through?

oooo hadn’t considered that…that could be interesting

The whole idea of a pirate council running a free trade town was a bit silly anyway so I don’t think you can use scientific logic to explain what goes next. It’s not very pirate like to look after refugees and rebuild cities from scratch but lets ignore that and assume that someone will rebuild this prime port location and the pirates will do it.

In terms of game design we’ll still see the personal story played out there in the same way as before. This means the Pact will not be running the city where every character goes and, um, founds the Pact. Remember that all of China will be founding the Pact in Lion’s Arch soon. There will still be the asura gates to the other cities. The pirates will put their boat houses back on the hills where they belong. The old jumping puzzles will still be there and there might be something new in Scarlet’s wreckage . I’m guessing a lot of the merchants will change and there will be new characters and new politics, with story lines coming from those.

@Stooperdale.3560. i am not sure if this is so. devs have said that china will be having the same maps as we do.

i guess that makes me wonder why you might think they would put the ships back in there? china is supposed to get lions arch just like we have it in order to synchronize living stories and new content.

They care about the people. The ORIGINAL pirate council was a long while ago… I think of the current lionguard/council as less pirates and more simply captains and leaders. It went from a collection of pirates and outcasts seeking refuge to a successful port city and trade hub.

“The ORIGINAL pirate council was a long while ago… I think of the current lionguard/council as less pirates and more simply captains and leaders.”

No they do still seem to talk like they want to be pirates. Even Kiel and Gnashblade acted like pirates with their own crews when it came to the election events. Mai Trin thought she could get onto the Captains Council as a pirate captain.

They keep the aesthetic, but of the existing council, only Peter the Lost and Anne Reid seem to have been pirates. Farth Scarclaw seems to have gotten his spot by killing pirates, Magnus and Kiel are practically cops, Tokk and Shud seem to just be slightly shady business men, and Hao Luen and Theo Ashford seem to just be riding on their family birthrights.

They are hardly your typical pirates. They care about the civilians in LA, they focus on trade and merchants for incoming, not pirating or raiding convoys.

pdavis.8031:

It would be a major policitical issue, but that’s what makes it interesting.

That’s what I’ve been going on about since the attack on LA. So many interesting political story lines. At the least politics might be more interesting than single super-Villain.

Tuomir.1830:

Besides, the Pact already has headquarters, and one that doesn’t conflict with the way the story and time is set in maps – Fort Trinity. On that matter, I’d be interested in seeing Fort Trinity grow as the pact readies up for the next task and become a small military city- of course, that’d require some major changes in certain personal story missions.

I’d always assumed Fort Trinity was the forward based for the assault on Zhaitan. Logistically speaking it was a good choice, however its a bad choice if you’re attacking a Elder Dragon on the opposite side of Tyria.

Kalavier.1097:

LA is a major port city. We might not have seen the ships coming and going, but they did.

Yeah but Asura gates basically render all conventional means of transport and shipping obsolete. It was only the costs involved (discussed somewhere else in the Lore forum) that really stopped them from completely taking over. Frankly the Asura could have completely ruined LA as a major port city if they wanted (even if they couldn’t decrease the costs, simply running at a loss for a couple of months would have taken all business away from LA).

And the waypoints should render hiking moot, but we know for a fact almost everybody walks/rides to travel places instead of simply waypointing, partly because of the cost and maybe because waypointing may not handle cargo, only people.

Rata Sum itself has a large port section. With several Asura captains. I don’t think they’d murder the naval trade when it’s also another source of income and supplies :P.

Asura gates only make shipping between major cities and over large distances obsolete, not shipping to smaller settlements with no asura gates. Garrenhof, for an example, clearly gets it’s trade through naval shipping, and that is only strengthened by the asura gates, as goods from further away can be transported to a nearby port city with minimal effort, from where small ships can distribute them across the coast.

Tuomir.1830:

Asura gates only make shipping between major cities and over large distances obsolete, not shipping to smaller settlements with no asura gates. Garrenhof, for an example, clearly gets it’s trade through naval shipping, and that is only strengthened by the asura gates, as goods from further away can be transported to a nearby port city with minimal effort, from where small ships can distribute them across the coast.

And Rata Sum and LA have major port locations.

Also ingame (before the battle) there was an Asura IN LA worried because his ship hadn’t arrived in LA yet (and was carrying goods).

Depending on the costs, people might choose to ship by water as opposed to the gate. Costs + timeframe.

I see people talk about the dragon like its right under LA. Its not. The chain reaction of the drill woke it in maguuma. LA should and will be rebuildt because the people wants it and would do it themselves if they could. The port is used and nessesary, asuragates are expensive. Boats are used no matter what some seem to think. As said before, asuragates are not cheap, and the common man will use boats, caravans and their back.

We understand it can and will be rebuilt. But the question is by whom and how? Rebuilt back into the style of the old LA? Back when it was the capitol of Kryta? Or the way it was salvaged by pirates? Or completly fresh and new? Who will have a hand in it and why?

Apparently the upcoming Festival of the Winds release will have something to do with the rebuilding of LA, so we will get some answers within a week.

I know! I’m excited! There was another thread talking about the festival, and rebuilding LA and what it might look like. I directed them here

The Zephyrites arrived in airships, airships were a major vessel of LS1 in terms of how LA got invaded and overrun and ultimately destroyed. Remember the absolute first teaser for GW2 from back in 2009?

Let’s have it, I want LA rebuilt in spirit of Labyrinthine Cliffs, with a fleet of docked airships forming the houses. Honestly, you’d also think the Captain’s Council would opt for such a way of rebuilding because LA has now been levelled with the ground 3(2?) times and having it made up of airships means the residents would have easier means of escape if someone were to launch a new invasion. They could just get onboard their ships and fly out in any directions (but the Dominion of Winds).

Oh, and here’s the trailer I’m using for imagining the next Lion’s Arch!

http://youtu.be/mX_Wp8SB_Co?t=9m4s

Leveled to the ground? Besides the flooding (which isn’t there fault as it was before there time)… what other times has LA been leveled?